16 Oct Beliefs in divinity
Thales applied his method to objects that changed to become other objects, such as water into earth (or so he thought). But what about the changing itself? Thales did address the topic, approaching it through lodestone and amber, which, when electrified by rubbing together, also attracts. It is noteworthy that the first particle known to carry electric charge, the electron, is named for the Greek word for amber, ἤλεκτρον (ēlektron).
How was the power to move other things without the movers changing to be explained? Thales saw a commonality with the powers of living things to act. The lodestone and the amber must be alive, and if that were so, there could be no difference between the living and the dead. When asked why he didn’t die if there was no difference, he replied “because there is no difference.”
Aristotle defined the soul as the principle of life, that which imbues the matter and makes it live, giving it the animation, or power to act. The idea did not originate with him, as the Greeks in general believed in the distinction between mind and matter, which was ultimately to lead to a distinction not only between body and soul but also between matter and energy.
If things were alive, they must have souls. This belief was no innovation, as the ordinary ancient populations of the Mediterranean did believe that natural actions were caused by divinities. Accordingly, the sources[which?] say that Thales believed that “all things were full of gods.” In their zeal to make him the first in everything some said he was the first to hold the belief, which must have been widely known to be false.
However, Thales was looking for something more general, a universal substance of mind.[citation needed] That also was in the polytheism of the times. Zeus was the very personification of supreme mind, dominating all the subordinate manifestations. From Thales on, however, philosophers had a tendency to depersonify or objectify mind, as though it were the substance of animation per se and not actually a god like the other gods. The end result was a total removal of mind from substance, opening the door to a non-divine principle of action.
Classical thought, however, had proceeded only a little way along that path. Instead of referring to the person, Zeus, they talked about the great mind:
“Thales”, says Cicero,”assures that water is the principle of all things; and that God is that Mind which shaped and created all things from water.”
The universal mind appears as a Roman belief in Virgil as well:
“In the beginning, SPIRIT within (spiritus intus) strengthens Heaven and Earth,
The watery fields, and the lucid globe of Luna, and then —
Titan stars; and mind (mens) infused through the limbs
Agitates the whole mass, and mixes itself with GREAT MATTER (magno corpore)”
According to Henry Fielding, Diogenes Laërtius affirmed that Thales posed “the independent pre-existence of God from all eternity, stating “that God was the oldest of all beings, for he existed without a previous cause even in the way of generation; that the world was the most beautiful of all things; for it was created by God.”
en.wikipedia
Image: https://www.google.gr/search?q=THALES+PHILOSOPHER&biw=1517&bih=735&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj15on-3oLQAhWGKJoKHVFoCIIQ_AUIBigB&dpr=0.9#imgrc=8VmDjbhC6ZYiAM%3A
